The Australian govt and Cricket Australia must enter into a serious and dedicated joint campaign to bring El Warno back to Australia. Failure to do so would be a disgrace to our country’s heritage and would undermine all that we hold dear. El Warno occupies a special place in every Australian’s heart and it is only right & just that he should be here for us in a time of need.
Seeing endless shots of the public of London cluttering the rooftops around the Oval for a distant glimpse of the cricket, it was hard to feel sad about the result. They filled the windows of every surrounding apartment, they stood on roofs on the other side of the city with binoculars, veritably the people of England had taken to the skies.
I am more saddened by the fact that the Ashes are over. I can’t contemplate watching any other 2 teams compete in a test match now. It won’t seem like a real test. It will be as though its a multiple choice test or something.
That final 1st session was the greatest session of cricket I have ever seen. England scoring at over 4 an over, Australia pressing hard, creating chances, taking plenty of them. And Lee’s final over before lunch at KP. Holy shit. Surely the players don’t have to go off for lunch, surely lunch is offered to the fielding side. The Australians weren’t hungry, they’d clearly had their Weet-bix, stocked up on Milo. They could have kept go go go go go go go going all day.
After lunch the sadness set in. Sad that there wasn’t going to be a mad run chase, a final breathless last ditch attempt. After lunch, nothing.
cricket’s twisted fragile narratives & crazy ironies – the sublime El Warno, Australia’s last great hope, powering his team to unlikely victory, puts down the catch that sinks all hope. K “Wearing the earrings its not going to make me cover drive any differently” P who has dropped 6 out of 6 catches in test cricket is put down by El Warno. KP’s 6 drops have barely cost England a dime, El Warno’s one (final) indiscretion costs the urth.
Surely this means pm howard will lose the next election.
Flintoff’s name resonates somehow with the whole Ashes idea – flint, fire, fire out, flint off, left with the ashes, he’s left with the ashes, he’s gone and taken the ashes away with him… only one man can stop him now. EL REY (of hope) WARNO – and he will need the help of a certain volatile muttering.
poor form of the Australians, indifferent form of the umpires, and now the weather’s form has sunk to all time low. It could be a sad end to the most magnificent series.
But Flintoff! His promise just grows and grows toward true immensity.
“I promise all readers that every drop of sweat we have in our bodies will be left at The Oval. We will give everything we have and more to win back the Ashes.”
Next Sunday night sbs are showing a documentary on the history of light. I hope it will help me to understand the light rule.
Sunday 18th September
08:30 pm DOCUMENTARY SERIES – LIGHT FANTASTIC – Let There Be Light
This four-part science series explores the phenomenon that surrounds and affects nearly every aspect of our lives but one which we take for granted, light. Greek and Arab scholars, and later Europeans such as Descartes and Newton, all tried to understand light to gain a better understanding of God. Tonight’s first episode examines how much of modern science’s origins came from the desire to penetrate the divine nature of light. Presented by Cambridge scholar Simon Schaffer. (From the UK, in English) (Part 1) CC
Ah, to once again see Justin rest his sweet head on the great Pillowman’s pillowy chest! This is what the waiting is all about.
Before the test commenced, after the sepia toned slow motion replays of agonised cricketers’ faces and cricketers’ faces laden joy, Dean Jones called it the grand final of all test matches in the last 100 years. Last night as Hayden (if that’s who it was out there, playing with all the patient care in the world) and Langer worked so diligently away at giving Australia the platform they have not had all series, it was fitting cricket for the occassion. Time stretches so frikkin thin. Every moment is filled with a massive expectation that something, dreadful or wonderful, will occur. Yet the ball by ball commentary goes on like this:
x.1 nothing happens
x.2 nothing happens
x.3 nothing happens
x.4 nothing happens
x.5 nothing happens
x.6 nothing happens
y.1 nothing happnes
y.2 nothing much happens
y.3 nothing happens
y.4 nothing happens
y.5 nothing happens
y.6 nothing happens
z.1 nothing happens
z.2 Langer sends the ball deep into the vast skies
z.3 Langer sends the ball deep into the vast skies
z.4 nothing happens
z.5 nothing happens
z.6 nothing happens
The crowd is silent or bubbles away or is singing tunes from all across time; hymns, yellow submarine, or original compositions whose repetition is wonderfully appropriate to cricket, birds or pop music with their incessant refrains:
barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army barmy army …
There is the occasional beat of leather on willow. Strangled shouts and shouts.
Over it the commentators riff, each with their own particular phrasing of popular cliches. Jazz interpreters. Benaud is a traditionalist, his phrases are well metered, clean and delivered with a calm conventional purity. Grieg on the other hand stutters away, repeats bars, gets stuck on the end of a sentence, halts, and goes again – he’s like Sonny Rollins trying to work his way from one phrase to the next or if he’s getting excited perhaps he sounds more like Coltrane cracking his phrases into pieces. Mark Nicholas delivers slogans. His air time is sparsely populated but with epigrammatic gems, short crystals of sound delivered with a powerful confidence. Each is a pefectly formulated hook that you may expect to enter into a sequence of repetitions and variations but is then followed only by air time. Until the next crystal forms.
Concurrent with the cricket, on channel 10, there was a football final being played. Football is one huge event compacted into 100 or so minutes. There is little demarcation within this event. It rarely ceases happening. Time is one great mass. The crowd is wild noise, the commenators don’t even breathe. The test match is also a singular event. But it is stretched out over 5 days. Time is stretched so frikkin thin. And it is heavily, distinctly divided. Ball by ball. Non event after non event, from time to time there is a minor happening or even a drama – the game turns on all of these. Flintoff comes on to bowl and my organs are so widely distributed that I can feel a small patch of sweet residual Russian Autumn sunlight on the left side of my heart. Living a test match like this the involved cricket viewer is thinly dispersed. Perhaps never to recover – how am I to recollect myself after the Ashes? I am no phoenix.
El Warno is the king. Without question. He is irreproachable. Entire people have long been uneasy about his indiscretions – there are no longer, and never have been any indiscretions. El Warno has licence to do as he likes, he has earnt total immunity from judgement & moral zealotries. Through his work, his tireless exertions and his focus on attaining the perfect state in which to produce leg spin he has earnt the right to be exactly as he will be. He is the absolute role model, the ideal human. The next person who thinks they are funny because they can mention El Warno and Mobile Phones in the same thetic space shall be struck down by a bottle of El Warno’s prestige line of red wine. The good authority is that it makes your world spin after a single glass – and of course it does, what else would it do?